The 55 Gallon Drum Practice Bull

(c) 2011 by Tom King

During the great mechanical bull fad of the 70's and 80's, we East Texas denizens decided that ridin' a fake bull looked like a whole bunch of fun. Not being able to afford a $12,000 one like they have down at Gilley's, we looked around for ideas. Evidently a lot of us have old 55 gallon barrels sitting round our backyards and came up with the same idea. All of sudden saddles were strapped to barrels slung between trees and fence posts all over the piney woods.

Because we often didn't give safety a high priority, a lot of us wound up in various emergency rooms with an assortment of cuts, scratches, fractures and abrasions. Over the years, in my work as a recreation therapist, day care director, youth director and teacher, I learned a bit about playground safety. I applied those lessons in playground safety to the bull barrel device and here's what I came up with.  While not 100% without risk, it is far safer than those early examples we strung up in trees (sometimes a little higher up in trees than was wise.  Here's how to build the Barrel Bull.  Enjoy!

Materials:
___55 gallon barrel with lid
___4 large eye bolts with short shafts, 4 nuts, 8 flat washers and  4 lock washers
___ 4 Heavy duty boat hooks
___ 5/8 inch heavy duty rope (grass or nylon - avoid polyethelene)
___4 large eyebolts with 6 inch shaft with 4 nuts and 8 flat washers and 4 lock washers
___Pipe insulation
___4 heavy duty 4x4 posts 10 feet long
___Concrete mix and pea gravel
___Western saddle
___Helmet

First things first:

Drill holes large enough to fit the short shaft eyebolts.

Bolt the eye bolts in the positions shown in pictures. Put a flat washer on the outside and inside of the barrel and the lock washer on the inside of the barrel next to the nut to hold it in place.  Tighten the heck out of it.

Put the lid on the barrel. Put the keeper ring over the lid and top ridge of the barrel and bolt it in place. For safety, place the bolt assembly that tightens the lid on the bottom of the barrel so you don't bang your head on it.

Dig 4 holes three feet deep or find 4 big trees evenly spaced at least 15 feet from the barrel in a big rectangle with the barrel in the center.  If you use posts, dig the postholes wider at the bottom than at the top to hold the concrete in the ground firmly - sort of a posthole oubliette. It will take you more concrete than you thing.

Set the posts in the holes. Put six inches of pea gravel around the bottom of the posts.  Mix up the concrete in a wheelbarrow and pour it into the holes to a depth of six inches below the dirt.

Drill holes through the posts and bolt the eye bolts with the long shafts in place with the eye toward the barrel. Again, place washers on both sides of the post and the lock washer next to the nut. Tighten.

If you use trees you can just screw lag eye bolts into the trees to hold the ropes. Don't loop the rope around the tree. It will rot and/or abraid and break more quickly.

Cut your rope in 4 pieces long enough to reach from the corner of the barrel to the support posts. Tie one end of each rope to the boat hooks clipped to the eye bolts on the barrel. Tie the other ends to a boat hook. Estimate the length at first. Get help to lift the barrel while you hook the ropes to the posts.  You may have to shorten the ropes a bit several times to even out the barrel. It should be suspended with the bottom two and a half feet above the ground.

Cut pieces of pipe insulation the length of each rope and wrap the insulation around the rope.  A couple of turns of duct tape at about 4 places along each piece of pipe insulation should hold it securely in place and protect you from rope burn or bumps. You can also use foam pool noodles in place of pipe insulation and it's better protection.

Tie the saddle to the barrel as tight as you can get it.  You'll have to retighten after every ride or so. 



Crash padding:
Two ways to address the fall safety issues:

1.  Old mattresses piled around underneath the barrel
2.  Scoop out a foot of dirt in a 10 foot circle around the barrel and overfill it with sawdust.
3.  Buy some tumbling crash pads

Instructions for use:
1. Put on a helmet.
2. Climb up in the saddle
3. 4 fiendish friends stand at the posts, one on each rope
4. The said 4 fiendish friends shake the ropes till you fall off. 
5.  If you want to make a competition of it get two 4 person teams. One team mans the ropes and the other team rides one at a time. Someone with a stopwatch times each ride, adds them all up and that's the team score. Which ever team has the longest time wins.

Alternative Approach:

What's really fun is to suspend the barrel over a lake or swimming pool and when you fall in you get wet. Make sure you have at least 10 feet of clearance on all sides from the barrel.

© 2011 by Tom King 

FYI:  I do not recommend any of this. You can hurt yourself, especially if your friends are sadistic buggers and delight in making you fall really hard.

Friend or Fiend – What to Do About That Tree-Killing Ivy?

© 2011 by Tom King

You'd be surprised what people will fight about. While researching an article on ivy and live oak trees, I stumbled on a whole series of rather nasty exchanges between two points of view over ivy. One group says ivy is a natural part of the woodland eco-system and ought to be left alone. On this side are organizations like the Royal Horticultural Society, the University of Arkansas and Texas A&M University who clearly state that ivy is not parasitic and not a threat to the health of healthy trees.

On the other side are those who see a damaged or sick tree literally covered with ivy and make the intuitive leap that the ivy must have killed the tree. On this side are gardeners, the US Department of Agriculture (some of them) and even some authorities from the above mentioned Societies and Universities. It seems so obvious that ivy chokes trees to death that the idea is firmly entrenched despite evidence to the contrary. There are some folks who actually walk around with clippers and chain saws, cutting ivy off at the base of trees, thinking they are “saving the trees” from a noxious invader.

If you understand the nature of ivy, however, the so-called common sense view is shown to be wrong. Ivy is not a parasite. Ivy is symbiotic at best and benign at worst. Ancient trees like live oaks form almost complete and independent eco-systems, sheltering within their branches, not only animals, birds and insects, but also providing the food, moisture and shelter to sustain the fauna and flora that live upon the sturdy framework provided by the tree trunk, its branches and its leaves.

Trees have enormous root systems that draw moisture and nutrition from a huge volume of soil. The root system of even a very large ivy draws relatively miniscule amounts of water and nutrients from the soil at the base of the tree. All a tree must do to compensate is to extend its root system farther and deeper into the Earth.

Ivy do not burrow into the tree itself or into walls they climb or buildings they grow on. Ivies put out small suckers that attach themselves to the trunk and branches of the tree to hold the ivy in place. These anchors do not draw nutrients from the tree itself, but only act as a support for the growing vine. Most ivy supports itself entirely from these anchor points and do not twine themselves around the tree like strangler figs do in the jungles of Cambodia. Virginia creepers, English ivy and other ivy vines may grow large and cover the bark or the trees they grow on, but they don't “choke” the trees.

So why are sick trees often covered with ivy?

Note these winter-bare trees. The ivy stops growing
before it gets into the canopy of the trees.

Good question. First understand that most trees naturally control the growth of ivy under the canopy. Ivy like deep shade. They tend to stay out of the canopy of a healthy tree because more sunlight trickles through at the higher reaches of the crown. The sunlight discourages ivy growth there. When ivy reaches the crown, it matures and begins to bloom and produce fruits. Animals and birds feed off the ivy's leaves and fruit and keep the ivy trimmed back. If trees become sick and decline, the animals, birds and bugs that have lived there all along may leave and be replaced by borers, pests and opportunistic critters that damage the tree further. The ivy, unchecked by the tree's animal population, grows further and further out the limbs.

If a tree is in decline, ivy can become a liability, contributing to the weight of weakened limbs and the “sail-effect” of extra leaves in the higher reaches of the canopy. The weight of ivy foliage can make the tree top heavy and more vulerable to storm winds.

The only time you really need to trim ivy vines from a tree is when you are treating the tree for disease. Ivy can hide fungus infestations, insect damage and rot. Removing the ivy allows you to reduce the weight of vegetation on weakened limbs and helps you find and treat damaged areas and bug infestation. Consult a tree expert before pruning problem limbs as too severe trimming can impede the tree's recovery process. Trimming ivy up the trunk and below the crown allows you to take the weight off compromised limbs while preserving the ivy's sheltering and forage benefits to the tree's animals, birds and beneficial insects at the lower levels of the tree.

While plants like English ivy may be invasive, especially in Northwest rain forests and may threaten to push out indigenous ground growing plants, there is no real evidence that English ivy are a threat to healthy trees.

I notice that the folks most interested in conducting a pogrom against tree-dwelling ivy tend to be gardeners and city-folk. I suspect it is ivy's penchant for covering over rotted and fallen trees and vegetation with a nice green blanket that most irritates the obsessive gardener. These guys seem most happy with a nice unlittered forest floor and trees with clean, unadorned branches. There are a lot of these neatnick foresters, especially in England and the damper parts of the United States. I'm not sure what a rainy climate has to do with it, but down here in sunny Texas, most of us seem less interested in running around with a machete, chopping down innocent ivy and grape vines for the dubious purpose of “saving the trees”.

Ivy is a natural part of the woodland ecology. Ivy grows on trees in the same way Spanish moss, resurrection fern, baby squirrels and birds do. There are some parasitic plants like mistletoe that can cause damage to trees. Healthy trees, though, seem to be able to resist or at least tolerate parasites. Ivy is not one of these parasites. If your tree is in good shape, in a good place and undamaged by you or by diseases transmitted from neighboring trees, then ivy serves only to support the tree's individual eco-system and to add a vibrant green cloak that accents the beauty of the tree.

The relationship of great trees to ivy was beautifully explained by the Eugene Fields in his sweet short story, “The Oak Tree and the Ivy”.  Fields believed trees naturally don't live forever. As they age and begin to decline, the lucky ones with a drape of ivy are gradually covered more and more thickly with vines and leaves and the story portrays this as a sweet thing.  As I write this blog, I'm sitting comfortably in my recliner, my hair gone white, with two blankets wrapped around my legs and feet. I would deeply resent it if someone snatched off my blanket because they thought I'd be healthier with cold feet! The truth is both people and trees naturally age and decline. You can't jerk off our blankets and hope we'll grow spontaneously younger.

God save us from busybodies, health gurus and horticulturalists who would rather we not age gracefully.


Sources:

Texas A&M: Live Oak Tree Problems and Solutions
UC Davis Cooperative Extension: Landscape Notes – Diagnosing Your Oak Tree
American Forests: Live Oak the Ultimate Southerner
Bartlett Tree Research Laboratories: Live Oak in Texas
Plant Conservation Alliance: English Ivy
Nature Net: Ivy on Trees – Kill It or Cherish It?
Royal Horticultural Society: Ivy on Trees and a Ground Cover Weed
US Department of Agriculture: Plant Guide – Virginia Creeper
University of Arkansas: Plant of the Week – English Ivy
The Oak Tree and the Ivy by Eugene Fields

Daily Bread for the Home Office

I love the smell of homemade bread, especially when I'm working at my desk in my home office. Unfortunately, I'm flying solo right now because my wife is in Seattle taking care of her sister. I've gotten used to having homemade bread on a regular basis over the past couple of years. It was one of those things, no one particularly wanted to do and I discovered early on that if I wanted homemade bread I'd better figure out how to make it. I did and even wrote a blog about making homemade bread with a bread machine.  Check out the link. There's everything an amateur bread-maker needs to know in that post.  I'm not here to talk about bread-making itself, but about the "sequence" needed to do it and work at the same time.

One thing I discovered about using a bread machine was that I got a lot of waste bread if I leave the baking part to the machine.  The bread machine bakes the loaf in the hopper with the stirring paddle in the middle of the dough.  It leaves a messy hole in the middle of the loaf when you lift it out. 

Then I discovered the "dough" cycle.  I found I could make better homemade bread by letting the bread machine make the dough and then reshaping it and dumping it into a bread loaf pan.  Baked in the oven, the loaf was pristine and solid through and through.

Now my only remaining problem was working breadmaking into my busy day. Every do-it-yourselfer is (or should be) familiar with the law of sequences.  For any DIY project, you have to respect the sequence or it all gets messed up. So here's the sequence:

1. Take a break from the desk for 15 minutes.  Set the recipe before you on the counter so you don't leave anything like yeast or salt out.  Take out the bread pan and spray the inside with Pam cooking spray.

2.  Set all the ingredients on the counter.  Put them away after you add them to the mix. That way you don't forget anything. If you did forget anything, it will be whatever is still sitting on the counter. It took me several disasters before I quit trusting my memory in the middle of a writing project. 

3.  Put all the ingredients into the bread machine.  Pile all the dry ingredients into the machine hopper first, then the butter or oil and finally the wet ingredients like milk and eggs.

4.  Press the select button and choose the "dough" cycle.  Then press the "start" button.  Follow the instructions for meddling with the dought for the first couple of minutes (see my earlier article for the secret bread-making techniques my grandmother taught me). 

5.  Go away and work some more till the bread-maker beeps at you that the dough is finished.

6.  Lift the dough onto a cutting board and pat it into loaf shape. Make sure you work out the hole in the middle from the mixer paddle. 

7. Gently set the dough into the loaf pan and set pan and dough, covered with a dish towel in a warm place (not the oven). I set my bread on the dryer with a load going inside.  Set the oven to 350 degrees and let it preheat.

8.  Go away and work for a half hour or so, then check the dough. If it's risen, set the pan in the oven. It will rise some more as it cooks.  Set a timer to buzz in 20 minutes.  Check the loaf till the top crust is a nice crusty brown.  It should be done. 

9.  Remove the pan from the oven and turn the loaf out on the cutting board.  It should fall right out if you remember these three rules:  (1) Never wash your bread loaf pan in the dishwasher. (2) Never leave your bread loaf pan to soak - it's better to leave it dry and clean it later if you can't wash it now.  (3) Wash it out with mild warm soapy water and then rub the inside with oil.  Let is sit out on the counter to fully dry before you put it away. See my article on curing a skillet. It's the same principle. If you treat your loaf pan right it will never stick.  The bread will just fall out of the pan after it's baked. 

10. Slice off the end of the loaf and put butter on it.  Eat it and let the loaf cool while you go back to work. You've wasted enough time baking bread!  Clean up later. If you cleaned up as you went along, you don't have any cleanup to do other than cleaning out the bread machine.

Looks like that if you bake it in a loaf pan instead
of the bread machine.

The whole thing takes half a day. You continue working and take several short breaks, the longest, of which, once you get organized is about 15 minutes. Most of the steps can be done in under 3 minutes and it really doesn't interfere with your day.  I'm baking a loaf as I write this.  The picture above is the actual bread dough I made. I'll try to remember to come back and add a picture of the finished product.

Hope your "daily bread" comes out good!

Bon' appetite

Tom